


These Colours Fade For You Only

by LittlePageAndBird



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Darillium, Episode Fix-It: s4e09 Forest of the Dead, Episode: 2015 Xmas The Husbands of River Song, Episode: s12e02 Spyfall Part 2, F/F, Gay, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Library Fix-It, Love, Married Couple, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, River Song Appreciation Day, Space Wives, Wives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-02-23 06:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23807605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittlePageAndBird/pseuds/LittlePageAndBird
Summary: “I’m never going to give up on you, River. I’ll find a way. I’ll bring you back. I promise.”The moment the universe relinquishes its demands, the Doctor conjures up a plan. It’s far from risk-free, but she’s spent over half her life now trying to save River from the Library. She had been after a miracle all these years and now, bolstered by the new knowledge of who she is and what she’s capable of, for the first time she feels like she might have one.She has to try. She has to.
Relationships: The Doctor/River Song, Thirteenth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 43
Kudos: 299





	1. Put Your Emptiness To Melody

**Author's Note:**

> My first Thirteen/River piece! It's been a long time coming.  
> Please show some love if you enjoy it, and check out my other Doctor/River works too.  
> Title from Hozier's Sunlight, and chapter titles from Hozier's "To Noise Making".

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s something ethereal about her - that hair and those eyes and that look on her face, like she knows every secret ever told. Always has been. Like you can tell to look at her that she’s made up of time and space. The Doctor stops, stricken to the spot at the sight of her.  
> Her name is sacred in her mouth. “River.”  
> “Hello sweetie,” her wife offers, solemn and warm.

The Doctor sits on the honeycomb steps of the console room, the Master’s voice an echo all around her head that swells from a whisper to a scream as her hearts beat faster and faster. She buries her head in her hands, dizzy. The past few hours have left her motionsick. 

Every lifetime, saving Gallifrey. For what? No More, she’d promised. The families, the children who had prayed to gods they didn’t believe in, for no more. All gone. By someone she’s had the power to stop time and time again, and chosen not to. The weight of millions more lives are on her shoulders now.

She needs to break something, she needs to breathe, she needs, she needs, she _needs_.

Her feet carry her drunkenly to the controls and she’s punching in coordinates with shaking hands that operate on muscle memory, a deeply buried instinct, like a woman possessed. 

It’s only when the Tardis lands with a shuddering bump at her destination that she staggers back from the console with a sob, hands clutching her head. “What are you doing?” she whispers desperately to herself, insisting to no-one in particular. “You can’t do this!”

Her gaze is pulled to the Tardis doors all the same, and she sways in their direction like she’s magnetised to them. Her ship hums, encouraging her as she walks, trancelike, towards the entrance. It’s so very close now; she can feel it, the way that certain times and places carry a weight, a pull, that never subsides.

Forehead pressed to the wood, she can hear the living hum of the restaurant. She closes her eyes and picks through the sounds, concentrating until it drifts through to her. 

There it is. The Singing Towers.

She knows that this night no longer belongs to her. She may not even be welcome. But restraint is a lost cause; she was always coming back here, she knows, from the moment she opened the doors on Gallifrey. Besides, it would require far more strength than she has to leave now.

She eases the door open ever so slightly. It’s an instant assault on the senses, sparkling lights and laughter and the smell of Aldebaran brandy and that music, that _music_. It’s like coming home. 

“Good evening, ma’am. Do you have a reservation?”

She steps out of the Tardis, shutting the door behind her, and presents her psychic paper hopefully to the maitre d’. “Oh, my apologies, your majesty. You… look a little different in your portraits.” She’s no idea who the paper has claimed her to be, but gives a curt nod anyway. “We weren’t expecting you till next week. No matter. This way, please. We have the finest table in the galaxy waiting for you!”

She’s left alone on the balcony, the gentle melody of the Towers sounding much like a _welcome back_. She wonders how many minutes or hours ago her younger self was here, eating and talking and laughing over things that weren’t funny to anyone else. Only to the two of them.

The sky isn’t quite dark. Still stars, hundreds of them, and all three moons too, but something new is swirling up there; that unmistakable rosy hue of a steadily approaching dawn. She thinks of watching it rise over the Towers, how the first light stung her eyes, burned like salt in them. River’s hand in hers so tight it ached.

She turns away from it and her legs fold under her, letting her slide to the floor with her back pressed to the railing. God, she’s tired. This body isn’t used to tired. But then, everything that this face was born from feels so far out of reach now. 

She knows what she needs; why she’s here. She loses herself more often than she cares to admit, falls so deeply that she sometimes wonders if she’ll ever find herself again - but there is always part of her that has been kept safe within someone else, all this time. All the best and darkest parts, entrusted to someone who always saw them, guarded them, loved them, with everything she had. _Marriage, honey_.

She climbs to her feet. She is safe here, in this little slice of the universe that only they know.

Curling her hands around the balcony railing, she closes her eyes and reaches out.

_Contact._

She bows her head and waits.

It had taken them a long time to learn this. The secret language, bespoke to their kind, made up of the memories that bind them. Matrimonial telepathy, some called it. It was a privilege that had to be earned. 

It begins as a faint hum at the edges of her mind - in her and all around her, a balm to an ache that leaves her gasping in relief.

Then her voice. 

_Contact._

“I need you,” the Doctor pleads, no louder than a broken whisper into the starry sky.

  
  


She paces on their balcony, hearts beating in her head. This is going to hurt. She faintly recalls something that Amy once said about good hurting. She counts each breath as it comes.

It doesn’t take her long - two hundred and sixty breaths, from the moment she hears her voice in her head. And then, footsteps.

After Manhattan, she’d spent months refusing to look at the ghost that was haunting her. After Darillium - here - she had done quite the opposite, perhaps because there was no ghost to cling to. She had tucked herself away deep in the Tardis until the call to execute Missy came, poring over scraps of their life together until it had started to feel like the whole thing was a fever dream. Both, of course, pale imitations compared to this.

There’s something ethereal about her - that hair and those eyes and that look on her face, like she knows every secret ever told. Always has been. Like you can tell to look at her that she’s made up of time and space. The Doctor stops, stricken to the spot at the sight of her. 

Her name is sacred in her mouth. “River.”

“Hello sweetie,” her wife offers, solemn and warm.

Her feet stutter forwards at the familiar greeting, and it takes all the strength she has left not to stumble into her arms altogether. River looks back at her, right into her, seeing all those things that only she ever could. Some little voice at the back of her head pipes up to remind her that she’s different now, on the outside - more different than she’s ever been. She had often comforted herself, when the spaces where River ought to be got big enough to swallow her up, thinking what her wife would say if she’d laid eyes on this face. River doesn’t say any of those things - and she knows why, she knows that she must look how she feels, but part of her wishes she would. 

The Doctor clenches her fists at her sides and forces herself to take a breath, swallowing heavily. “I shouldn’t be here,” she manages weakly.

River’s face softens into a little smile as she comes further onto the balcony, her footfalls soft as if she’s being careful not to startle her. “I won’t tell if you don’t.” 

She watches her wife as she sits at the little table for two, in the chair that was always hers, and gestures at the empty one across from her. “Bad day?”

She takes a seat. Her limbs are heavy and aching, this young body suddenly ancient. “You could say that.” 

“Tell me.” River’s eyes are steady on her, patient. She didn’t realise how very much she’d been aching for it; that oh-so-human need to be _known_. She revels in it for a moment, that wordless understanding, allowing it to calm her.

The name of her planet alone burns so hot she almost chokes on it. “Gallifrey.” 

River’s demeanour shifts at the name. Even to her, the person to whom she has whispered more things in the dark than she had even dared to admit to herself, her home is not something she has ever discussed lightly.

“It’s gone.”

River’s brow furrows and she sits forward, alert. “What do you mean, gone?”

The admittance squeezes her throat until she forces it into the waiting silence. “Destroyed. I went back. Everything was burned. The Citadel. The red grass, the silver trees. The people. All the people. Every single one. There’s nothing left.”

River blinks. Her shoulders rise and fall with a careful, steadying breath. “When was this, for you?”

Her mouth moves uselessly for a moment. Measurements of time seem futile. “Now.”

“You came straight here?” her wife asks softly. “Are you alone?”

She shakes her head. “Not usually.” 

Her whole head is ringing. She can still taste the smoke. She can smell the burning of bodies. She knows it well, but it’s new to this nose. The sensory memory flashes behind her eyes, again and again, like a series of electric shocks.

River’s hands reach across the table, curling around her shaking fists. The weight pulls her back to solid ground, and she watches her wife’s thumb stroke patterns on the back of her hand. It’s the first time this body has known her touch, and it leaves everything in her fizzing and melting.

“Tell me about them,” River coaxes, her voice gentle. “What are their names?” 

“Yaz. Ryan. And Graham,” she tells their hands. “They’ve been with me for a while now.” She smiles faintly. “My fam. They’re brilliant.”

River smiles, hands squeezing hers. She’s always known what anchors her. The Doctor sighs, shaking her head. “I haven’t even mentioned Gallifrey to them yet. They just wanted to see the universe. It’s not fair to put my burdens on them.” She glances up at her, a sudden sharp pang in her hearts making her wince. “Or on you. I’m sorry. I had no right to come here.”

She slumps back in her chair, slipping away from her wife’s touch. She’s only had it back for a matter of minutes but it feels wrong, somehow. To not be held by her. Like a night without stars. How has she made it this long, she wonders? When did she get used to being half a person?

“Even the best of us can’t carry their burdens alone, my love. And you don’t have to.” River’s hand reaches for her again, fingers slipping under her chin to tilt her gaze up. Her voice is slow, deliberate. “Listen to me. No matter where you are. What face you wear. What you’ve done. No matter how long it’s been. You _always_ have the right to come to me. Understand?”

Her eyes grow full. She manages a nod, and River’s thumb sweeps across her cheek. “Do you know who was responsible for Gallifrey?”

She swallows. “The Master.” 

River’s jaw flexes. She knows the history; the Doctor doesn’t need to explain the infinite complexities of how it feels. “He said he burned Gallifrey because he discovered something about us. About Time Lords. He said that everything we thought we knew about how we came to exist, everything we were told about our species - it’s lies. All of it. How can that be possible? He said something about a Timeless Child - what does that even mean? And how can it be so terrible that the Master incinerated our home, our people, our - _everything_ , because he uncovered it? What sort of lie could drive someone to that?”

The words tumble out of her, hopeless and afraid, as she recalls them. She needs River to work that magic of hers, the way she can hold the coldest parts of her in her hands and breathe warm air onto them, thaw them out.

Her hearts drop when River withdraws her touch and gets to her feet, but it’s only to come closer. “Doctor.” She kneels beside her chair, cupping her face in her hand. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t define you. It doesn’t change who you are.” She picks her hand up from her lap and kisses the heel of her palm, tracing the lines etched into her hands with her fingertips, holding her gaze. “It’s not where you come from; it’s who you choose to become.” She smiles, eyes full up of all that wonderful, terrible love she has. “Trust me on that.”

The Doctor dips her head and kisses her before she can think about it, holding her face in her hands. God, she remembers a time that this was unremarkable to her; something she did almost absent-mindedly when she’d had the gift of a little time, of day after day with her. She’d had to remind herself that she wouldn’t have it forever. It seems impossible now, that she ever got used to this. It’s that unique mix of thrilling and soothing that it always was, could only ever be, with River; brand new and familiar all at once. It breathes a life into her that this face has never known.

“Oh, I miss you,” she whispers when she breaks away, playing a stray curl of that amazing hair through her fingers.

“It’s been a long time for you,” River observes softly, a half-question. 

“Time has never mattered with you and me, you know that.” She brushes her nose with her own. “I think about you every day.”

It makes her smile, though her eyebrows quirk upwards the way they do when she doesn’t approve. “You shouldn’t do that.”

“Can’t help it.” She threads their fingers together. “Come away with me.”

“Now, if that wouldn’t be having your cake and eating it.” Her wife laughs softly. “Where?”

“Everywhere. Nowhere.” She thinks of all the new places she’s seen since she lost her, places that left a bitter sting because she couldn’t show them to her. She wants to do it all over again, the universe beginning to end, with River by her side. Or to just lie there, the two of them floating above some planet or orbiting a moon, doing nothing but existing in her presence. “Just come. Just _stay_.”

River leans forward until their foreheads press together. “I can’t.”

She closes her eyes, sighing softly. “I know. Worth a try.” She watches as River kisses her knuckles one by one, committing the feeling to memory. She’s going to need every moment of this later, if she’s to continue living up to the promise of being the person written on the pages of her wife’s diary. “Help me do this,” she pleads quietly.

River’s eyes lift. “What do you need?”

She thinks about it. They’ve always been indistinguishable, their lives wrapped around each other like tangled string - so as it often does, the answer lies in her past. “Say it like you’re coming back.”

The words aren’t yet a memory to River, of course, and she knows she’s pieced enough together about this night - from the stories and the way her last face always held her a little closer - that it’s a comforting lie. But she gets to her feet anyway, and holds out her hand for the Doctor to take. 

When she stands, aching all over, River’s steadying hands wrap around her waist and sweep up her back, settling on her shoulders. “Remember how loved you are. Always. Stay kind.” She presses a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll see you, Doctor. Out there in the stars sometime.”

She takes a moment to just look at her, whole universes in her smile. And then she withdraws. The Doctor watches her walk away until she disappears completely. 

But it’s not a last. It can’t be. She won’t allow it.

“I’m never going to give up on you, River, ” she whispers into the space she’s left. “I’ll find a way. I’ll bring you back. I promise.”


	2. Hope, Even On This Side Of The Grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The moment the universe relinquishes its demands, she conjures up a plan. It’s far from risk-free, but she’s spent over half her life now trying to save River. She had been after a miracle all these years, and for the first time she feels like she might have one. She has to try. She has to.

Her conscience and River’s voice in her head have been one and the same for a long time now. Her last face had stood by the words in her wife’s diary until it had fallen, death by virtue in extremis, and this one had been born with them written inside her like a brand. 

So it’s little surprise when, after she runs away from Gallifrey and the death particle, her wife isn’t far from her mind. 

She hasn’t touched Darillium again, not since she first saw Gallifrey burn; no matter how much she might ache for River’s boundless wisdom, for her ability to make everything hurt less, she can’t risk making ripples in that perfect little slice of time. But she takes her everywhere she goes, trying to stay true to the reason River loved her above all things.

It’s a while - a prison stint and a dalek invasion, in fact - before she can think about everything that’s happened to her. But when she does, an idea starts to form that she can’t shake, an idea that thrills her the more she considers it. 

The moment the universe relinquishes its demands, she conjures up a plan. It’s far from risk-free, but she’s spent over half her life now trying to save River. She had been after a miracle all these years and now, bolstered by the new knowledge of who she is and what she’s capable of, for the first time she feels like she might have one. She has to try. She has to.

She’s able to tap into the Library core fairly easily from the safety of the Tardis; her ship’s systems can hack anything, particularly where the boundaries between realities is flimsy - and even if they couldn’t, the Doctor suspects she’s always maintained some connection with her daughter. When the channel is opened up she takes her seat on the steps, presses her fingers to her temples and sends herself to sleep.

When she opens her eyes there she is, waiting in front of her - in that flowing golden gown that she was in last time she saw her in this state, like she’s insistent on looking like a ghost even though she seems solid enough to touch. She was always big on dressing for the occasion. “Hello, wife,” the Doctor greets her softly.

River grins. “Hello to you too, wife.” It surprises her - the gendered terms always do - in a warm, pleasant sort of way. She likes the sound of it. “It’s nice to see this face again.”

She straightens up proudly, forgetting entirely about the matter at hand. “You like it? Forgot to ask.”

Her wife sips a glass of what looks like champagne, seemingly plucked from thin air. “What’s not to like?”

“You’re not fussed about the gender change?”

River snorts. “Have you met me?” She raises an eyebrow as her eyes roam over her in a way that leaves her blushing, as she sips on her champagne leisurely like they’re at one of their parties. “So, sweetie. To what do I owe the pleasure? I assume this isn’t a social visit, as apparently you don’t do those.”

The Doctor winces. Her tone is playful, but her words carry a bite. “I didn’t want to see you in there unless I knew I could fix it,” she explains apologetically, though now she’s in front of her it doesn’t feel like much of an excuse. “Has it been long?”

River shrugs, running her finger around the rim of her glass. “It’s like dreaming. You can live entire lifetimes as you sleep. That’s what it’s like, in here - though none of us age, it feels as if we’ve gone through generations together.”

She nods; she remembers Donna telling her about it all those years ago - her husband, her children, the whole life she’d carved out for herself in the hour or so she’d been inside. “Must feel like you’ve been waiting a long time for me to show up.” She smiles, trying to lighten the mood. She misses their teasing, their flirting, the way they used to spend hours laughing at ridiculous things that they could never explain to anyone else. “Anyone in there take your fancy?”

River smirks. “It’s the biggest computer in the universe and I can manipulate its code to my will, darling. Of course there is. They’re not real, of course.”

“No, but that’s never stopped you before.”

She raises an eyebrow. It strikes her, pulls at her, how very _alive_ she looks. “Never stopped you, either. That was one hell of a kiss you gave my data ghost.”

The memory ties around her hearts like a piece of string, squeezing them. “Well. Had to make up for your encounter with Sandshoes.”

“Oh, you weren’t so bad. Just too young. You did the best you could.” River shakes her head, breathing out softly. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, you know. That day. I have a lot of time to think about things in here. I knew it was coming, of course I did but… that was the first time you ever met me, Doctor. Every single day of our life together, you carried that knowledge with you; of my ending.” Her gaze lifts, and she looks at her in that way she does, like her eyes are full of galaxies and broken glass. “It must have hurt.”

She shies away from it, because the last thing she wants is praise for her hand in any of this. “I never wanted anything more than to save you. But I made myself promise that I’d honour the only thing you’ve ever asked of me. Not one line,” she repeats resolutely, the vow she’d recited to herself on all the nights her resolve had come so close to breaking, when after Darillium she’d been a hair’s breadth away from tearing time and space apart by the seams to bring her back. “Are you angry with me?”

“Why would I be?”

“You died, River.” It’s common knowledge to both of them - she’s talking to her ghost, for god’s sake - but admitting it aloud is still indescribably painful to her. “You burned to death, right in front of me. I didn’t stop it.”

“I would have been far angrier if you had,” River answers softly, and she knows she means it, but it brings little peace.

“I’m sorry. For putting you in there. You deserved better than that,” she insists, her voice swelling when River begins to protest. “You deserved _better_.”

River’s mouth sets in a thin line, taut with the effort of not arguing back. “It was only ever meant to be temporary. Until I found a way to save you,” the Doctor goes on. “Really save you, properly. But it always seemed impossible. Until now.” She leans forwards in the dark, clasping her hands between them, hearts fizzing. “I have a plan. To get you out.”

River blinks, her brow furrowing. “Back into my body? You’re not just going to download my consciousness into an iPad or something?”

“No. Back into your body. Alive. As you were before.”

Her wife is quiet for a moment, considering it. “Why tell me? Why not just do it?”

“Because it might not work,” she says slowly, reluctant to admit what she’s most terrified of. “And if it doesn’t, then…”

“Then I’ll be dead,” River finishes for her calmly. “In the real sense.”

She nods, swallowing tightly. “I’ll need to try to... download you, into your body. I’ll have one chance. And if it goes wrong, if the download fails, I won’t be able to undo it. You’d be gone. Forever.” She casts her eyes downwards when the look on her wife’s face becomes too much to bear, half hopeful and half afraid. “I didn’t ever want to make that decision for you.”

A painful silence stretches out between them.

“Then I will.”

The Doctor lifts her head, meeting River’s shining eyes as she speaks.

“Do it,” she says, her voice firm.

“Are you sure?” she can’t help asking, searching her eyes to try to work out if she’s just pretending to be brave. It had taken her a long time, but she thinks she can tell when she’s hiding her damage. “I know it’s only half a life in there, but it’s a life all the same. An entire virtual universe - friends, kids. Forever. Isn't that better than - than nothing, if this doesn’t work? Is it worth the risk?”

River smiles, her eyes sad. “None of this is real, Doctor. It’s good enough, it is, and I’m not unhappy, but… I can’t _feel_ it. That thrill of seeing the universe.” Her face lights up a little as she remembers, and as she listens she can see her as she looked up at the stars of Calderon Beta on their honeymoon, as she listened to the music of the Towers for the first time. “With someone you love. The way your hearts beat faster, and the stars burn brighter, and everything has more colour in it. I miss that. And living without it… without _you_. That isn’t really living. Not for me.”

She nods slowly, stretching out her fingertips towards River’s so that they almost touch. Of course she can understand that.

“What’s your plan?” River asks with painted-on brightness.

The Doctor shakes her head, mimicking zipping her lip. If she tells her, she knows her well enough to know that she’ll delete herself from the core before it can be done. “Spoilers.”

Her wife rolls her eyes. “Will it hurt?”

She can’t lie to her. “Yes.”

Her laughter is soft and pained as she swirls her fingertips around hers. “No change there, then.” 

“Trust me?”

“Always.” She swears she can feel the warmth of her hands. “Doctor,” River says gently. “I know we don’t do goodbyes-”

“This isn’t goodbye.”

She tries to say it like she truly believes it - like she isn’t terrified. River smiles like she can see straight through it. “I just need you to know. Being loved by you. It was like being loved by the stars.”

She disappears.

The moment she wakes up alone in the Tardis, she sets the coordinates for the Library.

* * *

She’d never, ever forgotten how River looked dead. 

The Doctor treads carefully through the Library, head bowed like a funeral director leading a cortege, staying out of the shadows. The place feels haunted, memories growing louder and more painful as she makes the journey towards the core. 

She tries to keep herself steady even when her chest becomes so tight it feels like her ribcage might snap open, even when she rounds the corner where her wife’s broken body is waiting for her and, despite the memory having haunted her for the last millennium, coming to her side feels like trying to swim underwater with pockets full of stones.

River’s eyes are closed; if it weren’t for the burns and bruises marking her skin, she could be sleeping. The Doctor kneels next to the chair she watched her sacrifice herself in, everything in her aching, and tries to breathe. “Hello, dear,” she whispers, a pain in her throat with effort of not allowing her voice to waver, lifting one of her cold hands and holding it between both of hers. “Only me. Said I’d see you around, didn’t I?”

She lifts the crown from her head carefully, the one that had transferred those four thousand and twenty two people to safety through her like a current. Deep burns brand her temples where it had sat. “Oh, River,” the Doctor whispers, swallowing an apology. No being sentimental now, she orders herself. She needs to get to work.

A blue light blinks back at her innocently, telling her that the computer system is still up and running as it should be. Her younger self had been here several hours ago; the Vashta Nerada had granted a day. She doesn’t have much time. “Ok. We can do this, can’t we? We can do this, you and me.”

She pulls River’s screwdriver, with the neural relay panel uncovered - Nardole had brought it back along with her diary - and carefully sets it aside for use later.

“Ok,” she breathes as she plucks the singed cables from around River's body, throwing them to the floor. She always copes better when she’s talking, even when there’s no-one to listen. “You want to hear my grand plan, wife? So. Time Lords can be, well, dead, for all intents and purposes, only to be resurrected post-mortem by their regeneration energy. Happens all the time - or it did, when there were Time Lords. Happened to me getting this face! Obviously, you don’t have the regeneration energy you’d need for that. But I do.” 

She can’t help but smile, imagining the way River's face would turn thunderous at realising what she’s about to do. “Don’t be cross with me, honey. You see, I actually have loads. An infinite supply! Maybe.” She frowns and scrunches her nose, briefly pausing for thought. “Still not quite clear on the ins and outs of all that. But for the first time, I know I have enough to save you. And that’s all I need. Now.” She sets to work loosening her wife's spacesuit where she can, where it hasn’t melted into her skin, talking faster to fight against the tremor in her voice. “Your body is too broken right now for regeneration to help you, even with my energy - you won’t be able to get yourself a shiny new face. But I’m hoping I can repair _this_ body enough to transfer your consciousness back into it. And voila! Good as new. Going to take a hell of a lot, though,” she muses as she pulls back to look at the extent of River's injuries - healing her body enough for her soul to live within it would take several of the Time Lord cycles she’d always believed herself limited to. “I can’t be completely sure that it won’t kill me. But hey.” Her hands are shaking as she holds them out, trembling even as they start to glow. “Some risks are worth taking.”

It’s a lot more painful than she had expected it to be - she hadn’t given it much thought, but she supposes she’s never burned up anywhere close to this much regeneration energy before. Still, she doesn’t let herself stop to rest until River is glowing all over, running her hands over her skin to heal her slowly from the inside out. It takes hours, until her wife has more than enough in her for an entire cycle of faces and more, let alone the one she has. But her hearts are still; the pulse the Doctor checks for every few moments remains absent. And she can feel her own strength slipping away. 

“Come on, River. You can do this. I know you can do this.” Her voice cracks, desperate. “ _Please_.” 

She gives more, and more, and more, until she’s certain her body will catch fire, until she’s screaming with the force of it, and still there’s nothing. 

She slumps against River’s glowing body, breath finding her in pained gasps, fighting against the sleep begging to take her. Her whole body is shivering hot and she imagines slipping away here, River’s ghost watching over as the shadows devour them both.

“ _No_.” 

She presses her fingertips over where her wife’s hearts or what’s left of them sit inside her, letting a feeble tendril of energy trickle through her skin. “I need you,” she whispers, her eyes stinging as she closes them. “Please. Come back.”

It’s faint at first, so faint she thinks she’s dreaming it, but no - when she presses her ear more firmly to her chest it grows louder. A heartbeat. 

The Doctor shouts triumphantly as she curls a hand around her wrist and it jumps against her fingertips. When it swells from a single rhythm into the Time Lord double-time drumbeat she smiles, kissing the underside of her wrist. “That’s my girl.”

She staggers to her feet, lifts River’s sonic screwdriver and points it at the computer. “Now, wife. Time to do what you do best.”

She thinks of all those times she had to scramble to catch her, when she’d dive off buildings and cliffs and starliners without a care in the world, the whole universe her diving board. She hopes to god she can catch her now.

“Jump,” she whispers, and activates the screwdriver.

There’s a zap of energy from the core that flares as it flows into the sonic, lighting up the room in brilliant white before it blacks out abruptly. The Doctor pulls it back, clutching it in her hand so tightly her knuckles turn blue as she stares down at it. The neural relay light ignites, blinks back at her for a few seconds, and then goes out. 

She waits, not daring to breathe. It feels like the universe stops altogether, like time is shattered and suspended above them. Then River’s chest swells with a breath.

She lets the screwdriver clatter to the floor and gathers her in her arms, caught somewhere between sobbing and laughing. She’s not conscious but she’s _alive_ \- gasping for air, her hands clutching onto the Doctor’s coat instinctively. “I’ve got you, River,” she murmurs, kissing her forehead. “I’ve got you.”

* * *

The Doctor had just managed to carry River back to the Tardis and hook her up to a heart monitor in the medical bay with clumsy hands before everything had turned dark.

She’s curled up on the floor when she wakes up, her skin hot to the touch and a ringing in her ears. Using up regeneration energy always feels grotty, but this feels like she’s died several times over. Rubbing a sore spot on the back of her head where it must have smacked off the floor, she shuffles over on her knees to the bed where River is lying peacefully, her skin still harbouring a golden sheen. The Doctor rests her head gently on the pillow and smooths her hair back curl by curl, listening to her heartbeats like they’re her favourite song and following the rise and fall of each breath with half-closed eyes. “Welcome home.”

It takes a long time for the regeneration energy to work its magic enough to allow River to wake up. The Doctor doesn’t keep track of the days, but she feels them passing the way long days do; it’s so painfully quiet on board. She can’t concentrate on anything except River - the universe outside the Tardis doors passes her by as she barely leaves her side, monitoring her vitals to the point of obsession and holding her close when she cries out in her sleep with the lingering pain.

When she has nothing else to do, she lies in the space next to River once she’s moved her to their comfy old bed. Perhaps she’s worn it out from the effort of healing her, but she finds sleep taking hold of this body far more than it ever has before. Her last face had slowly grown accustomed to sleeping with her by his side, and had never been quite able to settle after she’d gone, a restlessness that had carried over to this regeneration. Her wife isn’t even awake yet and it already feels like those first weeks on Darillium, all over again - the many things a new face didn’t seem to feel, didn’t seem to want, when all this time it was only missing River.

One night, or morning - some undefinable time as they float in deep space where nothing can bother them - she’s roused from sleep by someone touching her. The backs of fingers, feather-light against her cheek - in her drowsy state she hums at the sensation, and it takes her a moment to stop relaxing into it so much that she forgets to think. 

She opens her eyes, hearts fluttering as the hand on her face traces the line of her jaw. Her head lolls to the side and River gazes back at her, a brilliant smile spreading across her tired face. 

“You did it,” she whispers.


	3. Stick Around, Until You Hear That Music Play Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What the hell did you do?!”  
> River punctuates each trembling word with a shove to her chest until she’s pinned to the console, feet scrambling for purchase on the floor. She catches her wife’s wrists, trying to keep her voice even. “You told me to find a way around it-”  
> “Never like that. Never.” River twists herself free and staggers backwards, eyes blazing. “You know I would never have agreed to this. How could you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy River Song Appreciation Day everyone! Enjoy xx

River sleeps soundly in the days that follow their fleeting reunion, and the Doctor braces herself. She knows as soon as her wife is conscious again it will become apparent to her exactly how she came to be not dead, which the Doctor suspects may ironically have the precise opposite impact on her. She swears that she can still feel the sting in her cheek from when she healed her wrist in Manhattan, despite having had two new faces since - she dreads to think what she’ll do to her for this.

She tries to keep her restless hearts busy while she waits, though the Tardis doesn’t need much adjusting to welcome her child home after all these years. The imprint of River lingers from the last time she was here - red heels sandwiched between pairs of boots that are now too big on the wardrobe floor; fat, battered volumes of archaeology mingling with Gallifreyan books on the shelves. She’d preserved it all without thinking, really, always leaving every one of her wife’s belongings where she found it because to move anything would suggest that she wouldn’t be coming back for them.

The Doctor passes the time dipping out of the Tardis and around their old favourite haunts, stocking the fridge with every snack she remembers River enjoying from their dates across the galaxies. She gets herself a haircut and a new set of braces in the sunniest shade of yellow she can find. She’s picked an armful of flowers from a meadow they’d once had a picnic in for their anniversary, or tried to - how was she supposed to know there’d be so many giant bees? - and is arranging them into an elaborate display in an antique vase when she hears approaching footsteps. 

Her wife is standing at the edge of the console room when the Doctor turns to see her, her hands balled into fists by her sides. 

“River,” she breathes. The sight of her pulls her hearts forwards and she can’t help following them. Her wife surges towards her, reaching her first only to push her back forcefully. 

“What - the _hell -_ did you do?!”

River punctuates each trembling word with a shove to her chest until the Doctor is pinned to the console, feet scrambling for purchase on the floor. She catches her wife’s wrists, trying to keep her voice even. “You told me to find a way around it-”

“Never like that. _Never._ ” River twists herself free and staggers backwards, eyes blazing. “You know I would never have agreed to _this_. How could you?”

“It’s not what you think,” the Doctor tries.

She scoffs. “So you didn’t use your regeneration energy to bring me back?”

“Well-”

She ducks as the vase of flowers left on the console flies narrowly past her head, smashing against the wall. She’s barely recovered from it as River storms past her and straight to the controls. “You stupid, _stupid_ , sentimental idiot-!”

She sets to work pulling levers and pushing buttons at alarming speed, growling curses under her breath, and the Doctor jumps to life. “River, hold on - wait-” She throws herself between her wife and the console, spreading out her arms and splaying her fingers in an attempt to cover the controls. “No - just - please-”

“Get out of my way.”

She edges along as River moves around her, trying to pry her hands away. “River, no, don’t - you can’t go - _River_!”

“Don’t touch me!” She recoils, tears in her eyes as she glares at her. “ _Why_?”

“Do you really have to ask me that?” She straightens up, searching her eyes desperately for any semblance of understanding, but all she can find is fury. “River. I-”

“No, _no_.” Her wife’s voice shakes with its warning. “Don’t you dare say that to me now.” 

She gasps suddenly, wincing as she clutches at her chest. The Doctor stutters forwards helplessly, stretching out a hand towards her. “I’m fine,” River snaps, curling in on herself.

“You’re still healing,” the Doctor insists, following her at a safe distance as she limps around the console. “You need to rest.”

“Don’t tell me what I need.”

She stops, clasping her hands in a pleading gesture. “River, please. I know you’re angry with me, but you know as well as I do you’re in no fit state to go anywhere. And you’ll heal a lot quicker in the Tardis.”

River’s eyes dart between her and the controls, as if she’s sizing up the fight left in her, before she marches to the stairs.

“River, where are you-”

She whirls around, pointing a shaking finger at her from the balcony. “If you want to live to see your next face, you’ll leave me alone,” she snaps, turning swiftly on her heel and disappearing out of sight.

“That went well,” the Doctor mutters under her breath, kicking sulkily at the console and earning a reprimanding hum from the Tardis. Could have been worse, she thinks as she plucks the flowers off the floor one by one. At least all her organs are intact.

* * *

She doesn’t see River for a week.

The Tardis and her child have always been in cahoots. Her ship puts whatever room River is dwelling in behind never-ending corridors, or at the top of the helter-skelter slide, or hides it deep in the rainforest floor.

“You’re supposed to be on my side!” she groans when she finds that the bedroom has moved yet again and the Tardis is refusing to let her in on its new location. The fridge is slowly emptying of River’s favourite foods, so there’s that. She checks it every day and counts the spaces left with a little smile because they’re the only indication that she’s even still on board. She wonders if one day the food will stop depleting, and that’s how she’ll find out that she’s gone.

This is nothing by their standards - she’d spent more than a few nights on Darillium sleeping on Nardole’s sofa, and of course she couldn’t forget that month stuck with the otters - but all the same, she worries. That this might finally be the one thing she can’t forgive. 

It doesn’t matter, she tells herself when the Tardis is dark and quiet - as long as River is out there in the universe somewhere, being bold and brilliant and bad, that’s enough. Maybe she can look for her when she has a new face, and start all over again pretending to be someone new. 

The first time she catches a glimpse of River, she’s at the far end of one of the Tardis corridors with a fresh armful of supplies from the fridge. She’s about to disappear behind a door that she recognises as the one leading to the bedroom when their eyes meet and they freeze, glaring each other down like cat and mouse.

The Doctor hurtles down the corridor, but River is quicker. 

“River - wait!” She reaches the door just as it slams in her face. “River, please talk to me,” she pleads through the wood. “You could live for thousands of years now - you can’t avoid me forever!”

She’s met with hostile silence, and raps out a rhythm on the door with her knuckles. “Riv _er_. Don’t make me get my poetry book. Or my guitar!” 

She wonders if she can still play it. Her bow-tied self had been fond of yelling EE Cummings verses through the ship walls when he’d pissed River off - a regular enough occurrence that she can still recite several of them word for word - whereas the last one was more partial to a serenade. This one hasn’t quite found its romance language yet, other than the small gesture of resurrecting her from the dead.

“If you’d just let me explain - I didn’t use up my regenerations,” she offers desperately. “I literally can’t. Turns out I have an unlimited supply, so - no harm done!” 

There’s still no response and she sighs, wandering in restless circles outside the door. “I’m not who you thought. I’m not who _I_ thought.” 

She lets her legs give way under her and slides down until she hits the floor, her back pressed to the wall. “I wasn’t born on Gallifrey,” she says, for the first time to someone other than herself. “I was found - a kid from god knows where with the ability to change my face - and brought there by a Shobogan. I was experimented on, like an animal, until they could isolate my regeneration gene and inject it into others. I made the Time Lords. That’s what the Master meant. That’s why he destroyed them all. I’m the Timeless Child.”

She hears the door handle turning, and looks up to find River standing over her. “I don’t have limits on my regenerations,” she explains gravely. “That’s how I was able to save you.”

River pulls the door shut behind her and sits next to her on the floor, their hips just touching. A moment of silence stretches out between them. “You’re not from Gallifrey?” she echoes softly.

The Doctor shakes her head, drawing her knees up to her chest. “I’ve no idea where I’m from. Or what I am.”

“Well, you’re still a Time Lord by definition - you were the blueprint for the whole species. No wonder the Master burned it to the ground,” River muses, her brow furrowing. “In a way, this makes you their god.”

“I don’t want to be a god,” she snaps, grimacing. “I never wanted to be a god. I just want to be - out there!” She gestures to the unseen stars above their heads. “In the universe. Running, and fixing stuff, seeing new worlds. That’s all.” She sighs and lets her head fall to her hands, pressing her fingers into her eye sockets.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” she hears. River pries a hand away from her face to hold it between hers, and the casual intimacy of it, the warmth of it, steals her breath away. “I know how lonely it feels to be robbed of a childhood. But it doesn’t mean that you’re alone. Not ever.”

She watches her wife’s face carefully as she talks. “It doesn't bother you?” she manages.

“What, my love?”

The term of endearment squeezes her throat, and she blinks back the tears that have welled suddenly in her eyes without permission. “That I’m not who you thought I was.”

“Oh, you idiot. I thought you were the Doctor. And you are.” She squeezes her hand, her eyes soft. “Like I said on the balcony, this doesn’t define you. It says far more about you that you became who you are, in spite of everything that they did to you. I know that’s not easy.” They came from the same beginnings, she thinks. No wonder they’d been so drawn to each other, despite everything. “And it says everything that the first thing you do with power in your hands is use it to save someone else.”

She watches River stretch out her fingers in the palm of her hand, a barely visible undercurrent of golden light flowing through her veins. “How you feeling?” she hedges.

“Oh, you know. Roughly like I’ve been burned to death and then burned back to life again.” She raises her eyebrows at her sternly, but there’s a smile there too. “How much did you give me?”

“Dunno,” she says quickly.

“Doctor.”

“It’s - it’s tricky to measure exactly.” She relents under River’s glare. “At least enough for a standard Time Lord cycle. Maybe more.”

“Maybe?”

“Probably.”

“And you still have regenerations?”

“Infinite regenerations, apparently.”

River shakes her head at her when she tries a smile. “It still could have killed you. I’m not worth that.”

“Of course you are, River,” she admonishes. “Do you really think I wouldn’t die for you?”

River’s eyes blow wide, startled by the question. The Doctor had made certain that her wife knew she was loved - on Darillim she’d been sure to leave her with no choice but to believe it - but it amuses her, in a painful sort of way, how horrified she sometimes looks when she’s reminded of it. “I never want you to do that.”

“You did it for me,” she reminds her. “Double standards.”

It makes her laugh a little. “I wouldn’t recommend it. I really thought the Library was the end,” she whispers, tears shining in her eyes even as she smiles. “It was amazing, that you gave me that; eternity with every book ever written, every world ever imagined. But I didn’t want to live forever if I didn’t have you.”

The Doctor bites her lip. “Well, as it happens, I do have one more _tiny_ thing up my sleeve for that.”

River rolls her eyes fondly. “Of course you do.”

“When it does all end someday, like everything does…” She pulls River’s screwdriver out of one of her pockets and her own Sheffield-steel version out of the other, removing a small metal panel and holding them both side by side. “Matching neural relays. So we can go to the Library together.”

River runs her fingertip the neural relay in the Doctor’s screwdriver. “When did you do that?” she breathes, her voice thick.

“The same time that I built yours, on Darillium, I built one into my old screwdriver. And I promised I’d make it part of every screwdriver I had, for as long as I lived. I was always coming to you, in the end. But now I know I have all these regenerations… I didn’t fancy waiting all that time to see you again.” She smiled, her voice dropping to a whisper. “We have new lifetimes to live first. You and me. Time and space.”

The words barely get out of her before River surges forwards, takes her face in her hands and kisses her soundly. She thinks of the months that followed sunrise, the intangible time after her when to wake up alone in the Tardis was to die over and over again. It had taken her years to stop calling out her name or reaching for her out of instinct, the kind that had branded itself into her with such searing intensity that to be without it felt like missing her insides. She thinks of all the faces of hers she’ll kiss and all future faces of her own that will be kissed by her, and smiles against her lips.

“Just so we’re clear, I’m still furious with you,” River reminds her sharply when she pulls away, pinching her chin. “But more of that might just help your case. And restocking the fridge wouldn’t hurt either.”

The Doctor grins. “And how about… this?” She digs into her coat pocket and pulls out the battered old diary she always keeps with her.

River gasps. “You got it!”

“Nardole did.”

She grins. “Of course. Did he kick your arse?”

“Constantly.”

River’s eyes fall to her diary, smoothing her hand over the battered cover. “Hello, you.” She thumbs through the wrinkled pages, flicking right through to the end where the writing is almost too small to read, crammed in right to the bottom of the final page. “Shame there’s no room to write about all of this.”

Seconds of silence fall between them. “Maybe we could start a new one,” the Doctor suggests quietly, hands wringing in her lap. 

“Volume two?” River looks up, and the Doctor lets herself breathe again when she sees a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “I’d love nothing more.”

**Author's Note:**

> Massive massive thanks to the regulars who have been leaving comments and kudos on my latest stuff. It's a hard time for everyone, and it means a lot to me. Stay well and stay safe x


End file.
